Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sean Connery has died

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 261 posts

Re: Sean Connery has died

#221

Post by watwut »

mc32 wrote: post #69
tsimionescu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about the art, it is about the man. While he was a great actor, style icon, artist, and had a tremendously interesting life, he was also quite explicitly misogynistic in several interviews.

I get that. We can criticize that aspect surely. However, if you like the performance like it. Disconnect the person from the performance and from the larger context (his movies were complicit in sexism). Look, consensual people can engage in degrading stuff, but we don’t come down on that because we believe that’s a private matter between consenting adults.

AFAIK, he was not taking about consensual bdsm.

Also, art and person are related, both in good and bad. Ones opinions and feelings affects ones art.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#222

Post by watwut »

bborud wrote: post #58
eganist wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The art also degraded women routinely as a matter of practice. I love the film series, but man, misogyny is deeply rooted in the franchise's foundations. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/10/james-bond-miso... edit: interesting, went from +2 to -1 in a minute. Going to take this time to point out Hacker News's routine degradation of women as well now that it's on full display again.

Yeah, fortunetaly the movie industry was not a reflection of society. I mean, it's not like any of our parents or grandparents approved of any of this, right?

Our grandparents generation had more domestic violence then we do. Parents were in between. The domestic violence was much more accepted by those people. So, it is safe to say quite a few approved.

They even had jokes that approved that sort of thinking.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#223

Post by serf »

umvi wrote: post #102
ljm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any living person can hold a reprehensible point of view, and as much as I may disagree with it, I really can't stand this attitude of writing people off because of a flawed perspective. That doesn't mean I support spousal abuse by association, it means I recognise he has a shitty point of view amongst all of his other flaws, as well as his qualities. There isn't a single person in history that can meet this standard…

Indeed, I think it's a terrible mistake to hold historical figures to modern standards and morals. I'm sure there are things even the best among us do today that could be harshly judged in the future. "Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future" -- Winston Churchill

>Indeed, I think it's a terrible mistake to hold historical figures to modern standards and morals. I'm sure there are things even the best among us do today that could be harshly judged in the future.

Well, to be fair, people where aghast at his position towards women when he took it as a position. Not just in modern times.

Watch some of his interviews -- he seems to think he is coming off as manly and possessive, but the female journalists interviewing him usually come off as insulted, scared, and overall disrespectful towards his misogynist attitudes. Barbara Walters saw right through his image, which is why that interview was one of the ones to go so lopsided.

He was judged plenty when he was 'modern', too. Since the judgement came about when he was young, I don't think it's too great a leap to discuss now around his death.

This isn't a case where his behavior was normalized by his time of existence : he was a misogynist during the hay-day of the first wave of Womens' Rights, he was well known to be one, and his antics and interviews were broadcast around the world.

He decided to go 'against the grain' during one of the most important civil rights movements in the United States so that he could keep his macho demeanor. His comments in no way encapsulated a standard male response, he was deliberately pushing the buttons of people to strengthen and embolden his image as a playboy misogynist.

RIP Sean, I loved you as an actor. You were amazing in a lot of ways, and not-so-amazing in some others, but that is to be human.

'To ignore either righteous or the condemning would be to ignore history and humanity itself.'

Re: Sean Connery has died

#224

Post by mensetmanusman »

hencq wrote: post #159
bradbeattie wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to drift too far off topic, but you may be surprised to learn about biomass transfer efficiency. It takes a lot more plant mass to feed to animals than eating those plants directly. This "plants might feel pain too" gotcha doesn't really play out.

I feel you misunderstood the point being made. Societal norms and attitudes evolve and blindly measuring history against contemporary standards is often counterproductive. Please don't mistake this as some apology for slavery, wife beating, antisemitism or whatever. It isn't; people did reprehensible things in the past. Just realize that it's extremely unlikely that our current norms are the objectively correct ones…

I believe there is more slavery, wife beating, and antisemitism now than in the past.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#225

Post by TheKarateKid »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #71

I once helped Mr. Connery print something. I was staying at the Beverly Hills Hilton in 2004 during Oscars week. I was in the business center on the Internet (this was the dark ages before ubiquitous hotel WiFi and personal devices.) Someone comes in, and then a few minutes later says in a completely unmistakable voice “Excuse me, do you know how to print this?” I immediately jumped into parental IT support mode, it…

Surprised that being on friendly terms with Alex Trebek wasn't enough to make you feel somewhat courageous enough to speak to Sean Connery.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#226

Post by dredmorbius »

pbourke wrote: post #156
lenkite wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those descendants will be viewed in horror by their descendants in turn, when they prove that plants have sentience and thoughts.

I’m sorry, but this comment is in bad faith. Plants do no have brains, they do not emote or feel pain. Someone will chime in with a "well actually ..." no doubt, but to ascribe any form of equivalence between plants and animals in this way is a bad faith argument. And more to the point: our descendants horror will be that we knew we were causing the suffering of living beings and yet we did it anyway.

Trees have friends, feel loneliness, scream with pain and communicate underground via the “woodwide web”. Some act as parents and good neighbours. Others do more than just throw shade – they’re brutal bullies to rival species. The young ones take risks with their drinking and leaf-dropping then remember the hard lessons from their mistakes. It’s a hard-knock life.

A book called The Hidden Life of Trees is not an obvious bestseller but it’s easy to see the popular appeal of German forester Peter Wohlleben’s claims – they are so anthropomorphic. Certainly, a walk in the park feels different when you imagine the network of roots crackling with sappy chat beneath your feet. We don’t know the half of what’s going on underground and beneath the bark, he says: “We have been looking at nature for the last 100 years like [it is] a machine.”

"The man who thinks trees talk to each other"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/12/peter-wo...

Building off othe dendritic consciousness structures, my own suspicion isn't that trees have brains, but that trees are components of a larger brain-analogue --- forests or ecosystems.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#227

Post by ljm »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #215
ljm wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is relevant to acknowledge the portions of someone's legacy that aren't clean For sure. I think this gets complicated, especially in the middle of heated discussions or on the internet, when this stuff is brought up ad-hominem. Or close enough. It's why I don't want to bring anger into this discussion and create another pro/anti divide, because we're all going to see it different ways. I challenge anyone to come…

It has nothing to do with people having a squeaky clean legacy. If a world famous celebrity uses the megaphone of a televised interview to double down on and expand on views that it’s ok to slap women, that is a huge, dramatic event. That’s not just some small “we all make mistakes” transgression to be forgiven while we remember that person at his best. It is a huge, intentional literal broadcast of a very harmful be…

Alright, so what is your proposed idea to deal with _anyone_ like this? If Connery's remark is huge and dramatic, what does that mean for everyone else?

It took Connery to die for you to bring this topic up. I would expect you cared about this before the news, and not just in light of it.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#229

Post by ljm »

fao_ wrote: post #220
ljm wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but your response is far more uncharitable as you're making the case that I didn't read it and need a summary that isn't really that close to what you actually said. I thought we were having a conversation. I don't know who you're arguing with, but it's not with me or what I wrote. But let's address it: let's say that someone raped another person. The rapist serves a prison sentence for his crime and he co…

> and need a summary that isn't really that close to what you actually said. Aha, so this: > Such is the way of living in a community, where your actions will affect other people. Part of reforming yourself is attempting to undo the damage that you have caused in the past. And so part of that reformation would inherently have to be, retracting or attempting to undo the damage caused by those public statements. > A di…

You're rewriting it outside of the concept of reformation. So no, they're not compatible retellings. Your tl;dr is basically the same post with 'reform' taken out of it. Even without that, it's patronising to assume I didn't read what you had to say such that you had to reword it while also being sarcastic about it.

I don't feel that you're responding to me in good faith. More to that, I still feel like you're responding to your imagined version of my response, and not the actual one. It feels to me like you're creating an argument when I was merely disagreeing and presenting my reason why. I don't really understand how the tone of this chat became so aggressive through you.

Our peers here on HN can decide that, one way or another.

Re: Sean Connery has died

#230

Post by mixmastamyk »

hermitcrab wrote: post #213
kthejoker2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His top 5 performances in my mind * The Man Who Would Be King * The Offense * Last Crusade * The Untouchables * The Wind and the Lion He wasn't as bad of an actor as people say (compared to the greats), but he didn't take a lot of challenging roles. I wish he'd played more villains/anti heroes.

'The Man Who Would Be King' is a wonderful film. He was also in some stinkers ('Highlander' springs to mind).

Highlander a stinker?
Post reply on HN